Meeting Notes - April 28, 2017

Attendees of the latest community meeting learned more about the newest Sansar release, which is now available. The Sansar Atlas was also discussed in detail as creators discovered more about future enhancements and best practices in experience publishing. Many members of the Sansar team were in attendance, including Product Director Jason Gholston, Lead Community Manager Jennifer, and Senior Producer & Sound Designer Torley.

The New Sansar Release

The next Sansar release is now available! Among the new features are object grouping, scene object filters, live audio previewing, new avatar outfits, and more.

A Scene Objects window can be accessed from the Options on the upper menu bar (previously "Display"). Also, creators can now right-click to see a context menu with common actions.

Experiences vs. Scenes - Jason clarified the differences between experiences and scenes. Understanding the differences can help creators establish more efficient workflows as they iterate and revise their creations.

An experiencerepresents the unique address pointing to a particular scene in Sansar. Each experience consists of a unique name, a thumbnail image, information about the experience, and a link to a scene. Experiences are how potential visitors can find your content in the Atlas, a public listing of experiences in Sansar.

This creates a unique URL that does not change — even if you associate it with a different scene. For example, a creator can setup an experience as a “pick of the week” that points to a different scene each week — yet the experience link will not break. Another example is an experience that has seasonal scenes, so a creator can direct visitors to beach-themed scene in the summer and a snow-themed scene in the winter — all using the same experience link found in the Atlas. This will become very important with the addition of the Atlas favorites feature (keep reading below).

Thus, a scene is a virtual space you have created in Sansar, including the ground, sky, and any of its constituent imported objects. This is the world visitors see when they visit your experience.

Best Practices in Sharing Experiences - We've noticed creators are delisting experiences from the Atlas when they go to edit them. This is NOT necessary! You can easily use layouts to duplicate and make scene variations to test. This ensures that you can still have a public version available in the Atlas, while you work on a private one you're testing with friends. When you're ready, you can list the successfully tested version so it replaces and becomes the new main version, while keeping the same URL. More info is in Managing your Scenes and Experiences.

Atlas Improvements - A revised Atlas layout has arrived in the new release, and even more improvements are expected in the near future. Soon, you’ll be able to search the Atlas for experiences directly within Sansar (similar to what is already possible on atlas.sansar.com). You’ll soon be able to bookmark or "fave" your favorite experiences, too, making it easier to track and revisit experiences as they evolve.

Experience Tours

Each week, meeting attendees do a field trip through new Sansar experiences, and ask questions and get design tips from our team. Experiences explored during the April 28 meeting included: